Divers may soon wax lyrical about some new hot installation -- The water's fine

Frigid ocean depths may become a more hospitable place for scuba divers who have
to spend hours underwater at temperatures just above freezing, thanks to the US
Navy.

For some jobs, divers can wear "hot water suits" that rely on warm water
being pumped around a suit via a hose from the surface, but the hose can get in
the way. So the US Navy has long been experimenting with special materials to
prevent heat loss. Now it looks as though they're finally getting somewhere.

The secret is a layer of foam containing bits of wax inside tiny plastic
beads, each just a tenth the width of a human hair. These bits of wax melt and
freeze as the temperature changes. While the diver is putting on the drysuit,
the wax absorbs warmth from the diver's body and melts. But when the diver slips
into the icy waters, the wax freezes, radiating latent heat back to the diver.

The waxes are long hydrocarbon chains that have been chosen because of
the temperatures at which they change phase. To provide optimal warmth to the
diver, the waxes must melt at a temperature below that of bare skin-about 33
C. Similarly, the waxes must freeze at temperatures as high as 18 C to provide
enough heat to the diver.

So far, the warming effect lasts for about the first half an hour or so
of the dive (Ocean Engineering, vol 26, p 547), but the US Navy wants to improve
on that, says Lew Nuckols, of the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, the Navy
scientist developing the suit. He is looking at various ways of extending the
warming period, such as packing more of the waxes into the diving suit liner or
weaving the beads into layers of synthetic fabric instead of foam.

The beads, which look like fine dust, can be placed inside fabric fibres
by mixing them with the liquid polymers used to make artificial fibres. Fabrics
such as polypropylene, which is water-resistant, are made by pumping a liquid
polymer through a device like a spaghetti-maker. Anoth'"/>

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